FCC broadband plan targets e-health expansion

The Federal Communications Commission formally adopted and forwarded to Congress a plan to significantly upgrade U.S. broadband connections that could greatly boost the adoption rate of health information technology.

The National Broadband Plan was mandated by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, and is the result of an unprecedented level of public workshops, hearings and online interaction. The process to get to the plan generated some 75,000 pages of public comment. The health care chapter of the plan includes substantial changes to the FCC's existing Rural Health Care Program, which already funds some broadband improvements. It has authorized funding of $400 million a year, but only a fraction of that is actually used. It also recommends added funding of $29 million a year to help upgrade Indian Health Services' broadband networks. Crucially, the FCC plan expressly supports changes to reimbursement methods so that health care providers will be assured of getting paid for conducting electronic health services. That's something that doctors and physicians have consistently said is needed to help the adoption of health IT. And the FCC is recommending to Congress that current licensing, privileging and credentialing standards that now hamper physicians from practicing medicine remotely and across state lines be rewritten to better reflect the potential of 21st Century technologies.